GOP vs. the GOP

There is what only appears to be a fight over abortion taking place at the fiscal session of the Legislature.

Actually, there is wide agreement among the controlling conservative Republicans at the Capitol. It is to do away with abortion to the broadest extent possible as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court allows.

The real fight is over two factors infinitely less important. One is personal feuding among right-wing personalities. The other is the political preservation of right-wing legislators living ever in fear of losing their tickets to Little Rock to challengers coming up on their right flanks in primaries.

Nothing so worries a Republican state legislator in Arkansas as a primary opponent accusing him or her of doing some damnable liberal thing like …. well, saying that logic tells you (as it does) that the Texas abortion law needn’t be enacted right now in Arkansas because the coast is clear already to outlaw abortion entirely.

The Mississippi case is before a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court and due for deciding this year. That same court has let the Texas scheme continue in Texas but allowed pre-enforcement injunctions in states that would try to duplicate it.

That scheme is for Texas not to enforce a prohibition on abortion but for the state merely to offer payments to citizens believing post-heartbeat abortions to have been performed and suing and winning. It’s worked to scare everyone out of abortions in Texas. But that doesn’t mean it would survive a preliminary injunction anywhere else or even survive eventually permanent adjudication in Texas.

For that matter, some Arkansas Republican legislators think the Texas concept would allow liberal states to use it to ban gun sales.

Either way, the anti-abortion bird closer to the hand is the case under advisement by the Supreme Court.

But there’s another factor. It’s entirely a matter of personality.

The highest-profile advocate of Arkansas’ adoption of a Texas-style law is state Sen. Jason Rapert. He has a righteously imperious grandstand manner that can be off-putting. Beyond that, he is resented by Republican legislators who say they hear reports of his going around the state in his campaign for lieutenant governor and telling pro-life audiences that anybody not voting to extend the recent session or the ongoing fiscal session to take up his bill is not really pro-life.

Rapert preaches that his bill deserves a vote to save even one baby. He talks of “blood on the hands” of Republican colleagues who see illogic in his bill. Those are fighting words in rural Arkansas, and there’s a report of one legislator coming nearly to blows with Rapert.

The upshot seems to be that — aside from the logic on their side — Republican colleagues don’t want to oblige Rapert on the Texas bill because they’re mad at Rapert.

But they want to cover their behinds. So, to that end, a resolution was filed seeking to extend the session to take up another bill that would outlaw abortion altogether except in cases of rape, incest and to save the mother’s life. It would be designed to take effect upon a ruling of the Supreme Court allowing it to take effect.

It is no more essential as anti-abortion policy than Rapert’s illogical Texas scheme. Arkansas already has a constitutional amendment making protection of the unborn the law of the state. There are state statutes on the books that would very nearly put abortion out of business if the Supreme Court permitted.

The most efficient and sensible course of action would be to await the Supreme Court ruling later this year and, at that point, pass whatever bills might be needed to restrict abortion in Arkansas to whatever extent the Supreme Court was newly allowing.

But that’s not the real immediate interest. The real interest is to vote against Rapert, but not pay a political price.

So, this other bill is a backup in case Republicans think they need to pass it to protect themselves for having voted against extending the session to oblige Rapert. The Senate decided late Thursday the backup wasn’t needed, though expunging that vote by two-thirds is a possibility, albeit remote.

There’s a vast smallness to the whole thing.

Meantime, the evangelical Arkansas Family Council was openly lobbying for Rapert’s bill until recently. But then its president, Jerry Cox, said the other day that the Texas bill might threaten existing anti-abortion laws on the books.

It’s hard to see how that would be so. What’s easier to see is that the Family Council has taken the political temperature of Republican legislators and decided the smart move is to try to squeeze into a space on the side of the anti-Rapert contingent. Those Republicans likely will remain in the Legislature; Rapert is likely to lose to Leslie Rutledge for lieutenant governor.

I find all that politically intriguing, though it’s important to make clear that none of it matters to the underlying likelihood that Arkansas women could soon be re-relegated to utilitarian birth-vessel status.